RSpec not passing 'should save' test

Question

Link to Repo

I'm new to testing Rails so this is probably a very small thing but I can't figure out what's wrong. So I have some models I'd like to test. Right now the tests are simple; testing the presence of attributes and saving if all validations are met.

One of my models Profile belongs_to my Users model and passes all these tests spec/models/profiles_spec.rb:

require 'rails_helper'

RSpec.describe Profile, type: :model do
  context 'validation tests' do
    it 'ensures user_id presence' do
      profile = Profile.new(platform: 0, region: 0, tag: 'GamerTag', sr: 1600).save
      expect(profile).to eq(false)
    end

    it 'ensures platform presence' do
      profile = Profile.new(user_id: 1, region: 0, tag: 'GamerTag', sr: 1600).save
      expect(profile).to eq(false)
    end

    it 'ensures region presence' do
      profile = Profile.new(user_id: 1, platform: 0, tag: 'GamerTag', sr: 1600).save
      expect(profile).to eq(false)
    end

    it 'ensures tag presence' do
      profile = Profile.new(user_id: 1, platform: 0, region: 0, sr: 1600).save
      expect(profile).to eq(false)
    end

    it 'ensures sr presence' do
      profile = Profile.new(user_id: 1, platform: 0, region: 0, tag: 'GamerTag').save
      expect(profile).to eq(false)
    end

    it 'should save successfully' do
      profile = Profile.new(user_id: 1, platform: 0, region: 0, tag: 'GamerTag', sr: 1600).save
      expect(profile).to eq(true)
    end
  end
end

app/models/profile.rb:

class Profile < ApplicationRecord
  validates :platform, presence: true
  validates :region, presence: true
  validates :tag, presence: true
  validates :sr, presence:true

  belongs_to :user

  enum platform: [:pc, :xbl, :psn]
  enum region: [:us, :eu]
end

But then there are my other models, which "pass" all the attribute presence validation tests, which theres something wrong there because they still pass when I comment out their attribute validations and fail the 'should save successfully' test.

The most confusing part? When I run the rails console and manually test it returns the expected value (true), like with my Student model which belongs_to :profile.

So I really have no idea what's going on here. Any ideas please throw them out. If you all need any more information, let me know.

Answer 1

Indeed, it's an error of missing related records. Let's take coach spec, for example:

it 'should save successfully' do
  coach = Coach.new(profile_id: 1, roles: ['tank']).save
  expect(coach).to eq(true)
end

Here (in my experiments) there's no profile with id=1. In fact, there are no profiles at all. So this spec fails, as expected.

Buuuut, by the time we get to the profile spec:

it 'should save successfully' do
  profile = Profile.new(user_id: 1, platform: 0, region: 0, tag: 'GamerTag', sr: 1600)
  expect(profile).to eq(true)
end

user with id=1 does exist (likely because user spec was run before this one and successfully created a user record).

Lessons to learn:

1. Always clean/rollback database between tests (or otherwise make it pristine)
2. Always run tests in a randomized order. Spec order dependency can be very difficult to detect, as you can see in this thread.